PRF/M: Systematic and Functional Analyses of Enamel Microstructure of Early Eutherian Mammals

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Just prior to and immediately after the mass extinctions used to mark the end of the Cretaceous eutherian (placental) mammals underwent a major evolutionary radiation. Systematic analyses of these mammals, based on their gross dental morphology (the primary suite of characters available for analysis), have resulted in neither full clarification of their phylogenetic interrelationships nor in understanding of the adaptive (functional) differences that contributed to the radiation. Learning and applying the techniques involved in analysis of the microstructure of mammalian enamel will provide an additional suite of characters that can be used to address these problems and research techniques that can be passed on to graduate students who are faced with similar problems in their research. A sabbatical leave during the academic year 1990-1991 and an invitation to work in the laboratory of Professor Dr. Wighart von Koenigswald, Director of the Palaontologisches Institut der Universitat Bonn (BRD). will provide a new research environment, time to learn new research techniques and the opportunity to take a fresh approach to research on the patterns and causal factors of the early radiation of eutherian mammals.